In the seductiveglow of morning sunshine spilling in behind the window dressings, Leo was beautiful. Rest, sustenance, and his bath had restored the color to his skin. Bridget told herself she was dreaming as he devoured her with his intense stare and stroked her unbound hair with a gentle hand.
“Good morning,” she said as a test. For surely, if she were still sleeping, he would not answer. Or she would wake herself from this false world of promise and tenderness and sweet, blossoming need.
“Morning, banshee.” His voice sent a trill of pure pleasure through her, down her spine, settling between her thighs as a pulse of want. His hand continued to stroke her hair slowly, maddeningly.
She loved the way it felt, passing over her scalp, down her cheek and throat, to rest above her breast, then moving to start the journey all over again. Bridget felt like a cat. Part of her wanted to purr her contentment.
He seemed pensive by morning light. Different somehow, as if something within him had changed unalterably. How she wished she could remain here, in this charmed moment forever, warm beneath the cocoon of his blankets, her body nestled against his, his face relaxed of its ordinary tension, his touch that of a lover’s.
Dear God, she was in dreadful danger of losing her heart to this man.
She knew it the same way she knew her name was Bridget Mary O’Malley.
“Why do you frown?” His fingertips grazed the furrow between her brows in a gentle touch.
“No reason,” she lied.
“Your tell is giving you away, banshee.”
Drat.
She expelled a breath, bit her lip, weighing the wisdom of confessing.
Did she dare?
In one exhalation, she did it. “I am afraid I like you too much.”
There.
Done.
Except, his hand stilled. Then he moved to cup her cheek instead. That touch, so simple and innocent, burned her with the force of a brand. She tingled. Came to life. Part of her could not resist nestling her cheek more fully into his palm. It was so hot and reassuring. His touch, when freely given in tenderness, was her panacea.
His thumb stroked over her lower lip once. Twice. His expression turned pensive. “The first day I saw you at Harlton Hall, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”
She smiled sadly, all too aware of their disparities. “And then you realized who I was, and everything changed.”
“No.”
His thumb was back upon her lower lip. Pressing gently. No longer stroking. And it was maddening, for part of her wanted to open her lips and suck that thumb into her mouth and part of her wanted to nip it with her teeth.
“What then?” Her question emerged as a breathless whisper.
Here, in the early morning stillness, the rest of London—and everything that would conspire to keep them in their separate worlds—fell away. How easy it was to pretend they were husband and wife, two people who had fallen in love. Two people who belonged in each other’s arms rather than at each other’s throats.
“I realized you are also the most dangerous woman I have ever known,” he said then, his tone as solemn as his expression. Those fathomless eyes burned into hers. “Because you make me forget everything but wanting you. When I look at you, I see a woman who can strip me of loyalty and duty, of everything and anything but you. When I look at you, you are all I need, all I hunger for. You make me weak. So damn weak.”
His confession stole the breath from her lungs. To think she could hold such power over the Duke of Carlisle was both thrilling and terrifying. Thrilling, because knowing she affected him so deeply pleased her on a feminine level which had nothing to do with their clashing ideologies.
Her hands framed his face, and his whiskers prodded her palms like reminders. A pointedaide-mémoirethat she had no right to be here with him, to be touching him so freely, to allow herself to feel such tenderness toward him. To want to kiss him as desperately as she did now.
“You make me weak too,” she confessed, going against her every instinct. Certainly against reason. Flouting her promises to John, the loyalty she owed Cullen and the cause, her promises to herself. This was a mistake, and she knew it. She was selfish and she was greedy, and she was weak.
She had spent all her life tending everyone else. She had borne the responsibility, shouldered the duties from her mother, from Cullen.
How many decisions had she made beneath the crushing weight of all her responsibilities? How many times had she done something she had not wanted to do because she thought it was her duty, what she needed to do for everyone else who relied upon her?
Bridget had never realized it until this moment, but now she saw how easily and completely she had trapped herself. How she had fashioned herself a prison from which there was no escape.
